Sleepover or active overnight? What you can claim, and the two-hour rule

If you worked overnight and the night went badly, the question is usually the same: do you bill the flat sleepover rate, or do you bill the hours you were actually awake?

The short answer is that these are not two options you pick between after the fact. One is a flat line item for a particular kind of shift. The other is a type of support that has to be funded in the participant's plan before you work it. Which one you can claim was mostly decided before the night started.

What counts as a sleepover

The rules document, the NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits, sets three conditions. All three have to be true:

1. The support starts before midnight and finishes after midnight.
2. It runs for a continuous period of eight hours or more.
3. You are allowed to sleep when you are not providing support.

That third one is easy to skim past, and it is the one that separates a sleepover from an active overnight. It is part of the definition, not a description of how the night happened to go. If you were rostered to stay awake, it was never a sleepover, whatever ended up being claimed.

A sleepover can fall on any day of the week, including a public holiday. That does not change the item or the price.

What it pays

A sleepover is claimed as a single flat item for the night, not as an hourly rate.

That is a price limit rather than a set fee. You may charge under it. You may never charge over it. Figures as at 9 August 2026, from the 2026-27 pricing schedule.

The two-hour rule, and the part people get wrong

The sleepover item already includes up to two hours of active support during the night. If the participant needs you once or twice, that is covered by the $311.79. You do not claim anything extra, and you have not done anything wrong.

Past two hours, the rules say this:

Providers may claim for the third or additional hour at Saturday rates on weekdays, or at applicable rates on other days (Saturday, Sunday or Public Holidays).

Read that twice, because it is genuinely counterintuitive. On a weekday, the third hour onward is claimed at Saturday rates. Not at the weekday night rate. This is a recurring argument in support-worker groups and the rule really does say Saturday.

For 2026-27, on a weekday, that means:

For comparison, the weekday night rate is 01_002_0107_1_1 at $82.57 per hour. So using the weekday night rate here would leave you about $21 an hour short, which is the direction this mistake usually runs.

If the night falls on an actual Saturday, Sunday or public holiday, you use that day's rate for the extra hours instead.

A worked example

A weekday night. You are rostered 10pm to 7am, allowed to sleep, and the participant needs you three separate times, totalling about three and a half hours awake.

• The night itself: one sleepover item, $311.79.
• The first two hours awake: already included. Nothing extra.
• The remaining hour and a half: claimed at the Saturday rate, $103.54 per hour.

Three and a half hours awake does not turn the night into an active overnight, and it does not mean you claim three and a half hours on top. Only the hours past the first two.

Why a bad night does not become active overnight

Active overnight is not a rate you switch to when a sleepover goes badly. It is a support that has to be funded in the participant's plan, which means it is decided before the shift, not after it.

The Commission's guidance is explicit that these should not be confused, and that where the need is real and ongoing, the answer is a plan conversation rather than a different code. If workers are regularly awake for more than two hours a night, providers are directed to contact the NDIA about whether the participant's supported independent living funding needs to change, and regular night waking should prompt an occupational therapy review.

So if this is happening every night, the useful move is not to re-code the invoice. It is to raise it, because the funding is probably wrong and the person carrying that is you.

One thing that is not this

If you are employed by an agency rather than working for yourself, sleepover provisions in the SCHADS award changed from 1 June 2026. That governs what an employee is paid. Everything on this page is about what can be claimed from an NDIS plan, which is a different number from a different document.

If you are a sole trader invoicing your own clients, you are a contractor rather than an employee, so the award does not set your rate. The two get discussed side by side constantly, which is a large part of why this topic is so frequently argued about.

Checking your own shift

The Kygra Care shift rate checker will work out the line items and rates for a shift you enter, including overnight ones that cross into a different day. It is free and needs no login.